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Monday, February 04, 2013

surrounded by books

i've invited a group of creative, fabulous women over on friday for an evening of drink & draw. i got the idea from kim (she of the fabulous lampwork beads and findings). i'll make a mess of appetizers that will serve as dinner and we will laugh and drink wine and get out our sketchpads and draw something together.

tho' the house isn't as we ultimately want it to be and in fact, in spots, it's downright embarrassing (did they really have to use seven different ceilings?), i decided i needed this too much to let that stand in my way. so i'm making the best of it - i've rearranged and moved shelves and unpacked a bunch of books that have been boxed for two years. it strikes me that books make things cozy and homey like nothing else and so if i fill the room with books, maybe they won't notice that the radiators don't match.

placing the books on shelves was like getting reacquainted with old friends. i am absolutely convinced that surrounding ourselves with beloved books is good for the soul. i paged through and smiled at titles and memories of classes where i read them or papers i wrote flooded back, until i felt the whole room was coated in a warm blanket of words and the memory of words and thoughts and ideas. and i knew then that it will be all right to have these women over - that i am comfortable being judged by my books, even if i am not my house (yet).

i don't think i'll ever go wholly electronic on the books front, real, actual physical books bring me far too much pleasure for that. i started to try to make a pile of ones i'd be willing to donate and found that i couldn't bring myself to put any of them in that pile. so when the house is renovated, there will just have to be a whole lot of shelves. a life without books is not worth living. and a life surrounded by them is that much better.

3 comments:

There is always room for more shelves, even if that leaves little room for everything else.

As we move towards everything being electronic (I have my kindle now, and books are already piling up on it to be read, but they are out of sight, away, although, because I too cannot get rid of books, I have real copies too of some of them... Wow, this bracket became a whole other thought)I wonder how people who come to the houses of the future will know the people who live there. The first thing I do in someone's house is look at their books, and then their music. It's an insight into the person. Something that will be missed.

That sounds like a room I'd really like to be in. I love going to someone's house and seeing that they hoard books. (I once even dated a guy based solely on the fact that he had a literal maze of book stacks all throughout his room.) That blanket of words will be almost palpable, I'm sure. Have fun!